Got Hacked
I run a site as a colic support group for people who have colicky kids. Sometime in the last couple weeks it was hacked and the hacker deleted all of the ~4000 posts and all of the ~2000 users. Ugh. I found that out last night around midnight and spent a couple hours trying to figure out how they did it and what to do to fix it. I had a backup from a couple weeks ago and I uploaded that. It still had problems. After hours at it I finally concluded that I should just use a forum service and pay if necessary to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I feel very bad for the people that use the support group. They have colicky kids. They need each other. And now, someone had kicked them while they are struggling. The new forum is up on a service that hosts over a million forums (so they know what they are doing). I can’t import the old messages or users so I just have to hope that the active users of the support group make the move to the new service. Hackers suck!
Qwaq Gets Funded
Qwaq got funded with $7 million. Qwaq uses Squeak and Croquet to build a collaboration product. Read about it here on the weekly squeak blog.
CSI Las Vegas
Last night we watched a Tivoed episode of CSI Las Vegas. Normally I’m just barely willing to watch because I had the musical transitions between scenes – it feels too much like a bad music video. Last night was much much worse. The show was about thought experiments. The team of CSIs did thought experiments about crimes that could have taken place in the lab. The wife and I both bailed out on this episode half way though. It was horrible. Music video meets fake show about fake murders. Horrible.
Bully Kid Update
D went and talked to the kid’s mom after school. The mom is a really nice lady who works as a school counselor for an elementary school. She grounded her son and made him apologize to D. Then after dinner, his dad brought him over with a note that he wrote to M to apologize for hitting him. All better. M was very happy after the kid brought over the apology note 
Bully Kid
Today after D picked up M from the bus stop he came home and went right to his room. I thought D must have given him a time out for something. A couple minutes later he came out of his room and went downstairs. D didn’t start yelling so I was curious what could be going on (I was still working in the office). A few minutes later D came into the office and started crying. Oh boy, what’s going on?
M came home and was upset and went to his room because a kid on the bus was hitting him in the face (slapping). He told him to stop but the kid kept doing it. This kid is a 1st grader and bigger but they do play together (he is a kid from the neighborhood that they play basketball with). M has already complained about him to D and she had already told him to sit somewhere else on the bus instead of next to this kid. M sat alone and the kid came and sat next to him. The kid stopped slapping M when the bus got close to home. M was upset but not crying.
There was a spitting incident during the summer with this kid earlier this year. I saw him spit (full on big spit) in M’s face. I yelled at the kid and he hasn’t done it since (I was pretty pissed off when I yelled at him). M said he used to spit at him on the bus as well but it hasn’t happened since I yelled at him.
I calmed D down. She is planning on going to talk to his mom tonight. D has to go tell his mom about the spitting and hitting since we never mentioned it to them before. Luckily this kid’s parents seem pretty reasonable so far. I’ll keep you posted.
Disposable Email Addresses
I’ve been using this service called Spam Gourmet to help me limit my spam for a while. It works very well. If I had used this for everything I have ever signed up for I would be nearly spam free today.
The idea is this – whenever you need to give out an email address to a business give them a temporary email address at spam gourmet. The email address limits the number of messages that will come through to you. So:
amazon.5.monty@spamgourmet.com
is an address that I would give to Amazon when I ordered something. This address does not already have to exist with spam gourmet to work. Amazon can send up to 5 emails to that address and they will be forwarded to my real address. After those 5, spam gourmet will eat them and no longer pass them on to me. The 5 can be any number up to 20. If I decide that I want to get more messages from an email address that I gave out, I can always go to spam gourmet and increase the messages allowed to 20 again.
I have used these disposable email addresses a couple hundred times now and it is still doing a good job for me. I can’t even imagine how much spam I would get if it weren’t for spam gourmet.
redbox DVD Rental
They put a redbox DVD rental vending machine by the front door to my Giant Eagle supermarket. I’m sold. It costs $1 to rent a DVD for 1 night (until 9pm the next night) and $1 for every night after that. I almost never keep a DVD for more than 1 night so this works out pretty good for me. The machines have a very good selection, work off a credit card so you only have to type your email in the first time you use it, let you return your DVD without entering any information and ONLY COST $1. I’m betting that this machine all by itself will put the Movie Gallery right next door out of business. So far we have rented Chuck and Larry and Mr. Brooks (haven’t watched it yet). What a great idea. I want to buy one of these machines!
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
This year was pretty relaxed. We visited my parents for a couple hours before dinner. My mom had to work at night so we didn’t stay too long. It was nice visiting. After that we went to D’s parents’ house for the rest of the night. We played the Family Feud DVD game and over ate. We ended up getting home very late. Today was a nice laying around day. I only left the house to rent a DVD (Chuck & Larry) and drop the orders off at the post office.
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